Book room 17 in hostels in Rome

I'm quite fortunate myself as one of my favourite - and indeed most lucky, although I'm aware that this is quite unusual - numbers is the digit 13. While this is a tricky one in most parts of the West, it's not so much of a problem in Italy. Here, the number 17 poses difficulties, thanks to superstition, so if you were hoping to get a hostel in Rome with the room number 17, then I suggest you either change countries or find another fortuitous number as you probably won't see doors bearing this in the region.

According to Budget Travel, it's feared because in Roman numerals it is written XVII which, as an anagram of VIXI, is Latin for 'I have lived' or, in other words, 'I am dead'. Spooky stuff and not really a cause for worry you might think, but the Italians have issues with this and it might be an interesting game to carry out while in the country to try and find a room displaying the number 17. That sounds like a challenge to me - let me know how you get on! (In fact, I think I might play it as well, the next time I'm in Rome.)

Hopefully you'll find this next snippet of information as entertaining as I did - the news source also revealed that airline Lufthansa, hedging its bets somewhat, decided to do all of its customers a service by removing rows 17 and 13 from all of its airplanes. Comedy!

What's more, it's even affected the Olympic Games. Back in 2007, the Guardian reported that 2006's Winter Olympics - which were held in Turin - saw the 17th curve of the Cesana bobsled course be called 'senza nome', or 'without a name'.